Arrests

Remember Bernie Goetz? He made the news again over the weekend, and so did Florida's medical marijuana initiative. There's also drug policy news from around the world. Let's get to it

Colorado medical marijuana dispensaries like this one could reopen as adult pot stores on January 1. (wikipedia.org)

Marijuana

Let A Hundred Pot Shops Bloom…in Colorado. The Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division reported late last week that it has received applications from 136 people seeking to open adult use marijuana retail stores. By law, only people currently operating medical marijuana businesses could apply. Those who applied by the end of October will have decisions on their applications before year's end, meaning they could open on January 1, the earliest date adult marijuana sales will be allowed in the state.

Florida Lawmakers Oppose Medical Marijuana Initiative. Florida House and Senate leaders said late last week that they will join Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) in asking the state Supreme Court to block a medical marijuana initiative from going to the ballot. "We certainly don't want a situation like they've got in Colorado," explained state Rep. Doug Holder (R-Venice). Petitioners have gathered only about 200,000 of the more than 600,000 signatures they need to make the ballot. They have until February, unless the state Supreme Court puts the kibosh on the effort.

Florida Governor Candidate Supports Medical Marijuana Initiative. Candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination Nan Rich said last Friday she supports a proposed medical marijuana ballot initiative. "I’ve seen the research, I’ve studied the issue, and I’ve met with patients who clearly benefit and desperately need medically prescribed cannabis," Rich said in a statement. "That's why I’m signing the petition to get this important measure on the ballot in 2014 and I’m calling on all of my friends and supporters to do the same. There is simply no reason patients should suffer when an effective, safe, and organic remedy is readily available."

Canada SSDP to Hold National Conference in Vancouver. Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) will hold its sixth annual conference on November 22-24 in Vancouver, BC. Featured speakers will include Donald McPherson, head of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition; Dana Larsen, director of Sensible BC and the Vancouver Dispensary Society; and Missi Woolrdige, director of DanceSafe, among others.

Hong Kong Docs Criticize Government Drug Testing Plan. The Hong Kong Medical Association said Monday that a government plan to allow police to test anyone for drug use based on "reasonable suspicion" is flawed and violates basic human rights. The local government began a four-month consultation on the plan in September, and now the doctors have weighed in. The association said that drug testing was an unproven method of reducing drug use and resources should instead be devoted to prevention and education campaigns and cooperation with mainland police against drug trafficking.

India to Greatly Expand Opiate Maintenence Centers. Responding to an increase in the number of injection drug users, the Indian government is moving to expand the number of its Opiate Substitution Therapy (OST) centers six-fold, from a current 52 to 300 by the end of the year. Drug user groups, including the Indian Drug Users Forum, and harm reduction groups, such as Project Orchid have been involved in planning the expansion. It's not clear what drug the Indians are using in OST.

Cartel Violence Flares in Mexican Border Town. Sunday shoot-outs between rival drug trafficking organizations and between traffickers and soldiers left at least 13 people dead in the Mexican border town of Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande River from Brownville, Texas. Four men and a woman were killed in clashes between rival gangs, and eight more died in fighting with Mexican Marines. Somewhere north of 75,000 people have been killed in violence since former President Felipe Calderon called out the armed forces to wage war on the cartels six and a half years ago. Meanwhile, the drugs continue to flow north and the guns and cash flow south.

(This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

The FBI Monday released its annual Uniform Crime Report, and the numbers show that the war on drugs continues to roll right along. Despite marijuana legalization in two states and increasing public support for policy alternatives to perpetual drug war, police arrested slightly more drug offenders than the previous year, with drug arrests accounting for nearly 13% of all arrests for any offense.

The data showed 1,552,432 arrests for drug offenses last year, some 21,000 more than the previous year. Nearly half (48.3%) were marijuana offenses, down slightly from 49.5% the previous year.

That is just under three quarters of a million (749,825) pot arrests last year, down a negligible 8,000 from 2011. Some 87% of all marijuana arrests were for simple possession, meaning that 658,231 people got popped just for holding a little weed. That's the equivalent of arresting every resident of Memphis, Boston, or Seattle. Another 91,593 were arrested for growing or selling the stuff.

Drug law violations constituted the largest number of arrests in any offense category, outstripping driving under the influence (1.28 million arrests), larceny/theft (1.28 million), simple assault (1.12 million arrests), disorderly conduct (544,000), all violent crime combined (521,000), and drunkenness (511,000). Only the number of all property crime arrests combined (1.65 million) exceeded the number of drug arrests.

The drug war juggernaut cruised on even as violent crime increased in 2012 -- the first increase in six years. Violent crimes -- rape, robbery, murder, aggravated assault -- rose 0.7% over 2011, prompting advocates to call on law enforcement to concentrate on violent crime, not drug users.

"As a former prosecuting attorney myself, I believe it is irresponsible to squander our limited law enforcement resources on this disastrous public policy failure," said Dan Riffle, Marijuana Policy Project federal policies director. "That is especially true when so many violent crimes remain unsolved. Every second spent arresting and prosecuting adults for marijuana is time that could have been spent preventing and solving real crimes."

"Each one of those arrests is the story of someone who may suffer a variety of adverse effects from their interaction with the justice system," said Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) executive director Neill Franklin, a former Maryland narcotics officer. "Commit a murder or a robbery and the government will still give you a student loan. Get convicted for smoking a joint and you're likely to lose it."

The other piece of big news today was a federal judge finding New York Police Department's "stop and frisk" program unconstitutional. Judge Scheindlin used some pretty scathing language in her nearly-200 page opinion. Phil's article is here.

Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to appeal the ruling, claiming that the stop and frisk practice works and makes the city safer. But as I pointed out in a recent post, while there is research suggesting NYC police have done a lot of good innovating, so far at least the research has not borne out stop and frisk as being one of them.

That is to say, there are other things police do in New York, besides stop and frisk, that have produced a larger than average crime drop than other cities. And they also do stop and frisk, which research hasn't found to help with that.

One more note for now is that we have also written, and more extensively, about NYC as the world's marijuana arrest capital. This is different from the stop and frisk practice, but stop and frisk undoubtedly fuels it.

The DEA has agreed to pay $4.1 million to San Diego college student Daniel Chong after rounding him up in a drug sweep last year and then forgetting him in a holding cell for five days without food or water.

Chong's not-so-excellent adventure began on the night of April 20, 2012, when the engineering student went to a friend's house in University City to celebrate the pot-smokers' holiday. He was unaware that the house had been under surveillance by a federal drug task force, and had slept over when DEA agents raided the place early the next morning.

Agents found 18,000 ecstasy tablets, as well as marijuana and several weapons in the home. They also found Chong sleeping on the living room couch. DEA agents transported Chong and six other people in the house to the DEA's San Diego office for follow-up questioning.

After questioning, DEA agents decided against charging him and said they would release him. But instead, he was returned to a temporary holding cell -- and forgotten. Chong spent the next four days in the cell without food or water. He said he resorted to drinking his own urine, became delirious, and broke his glasses, using shards from them to cut the message "Sorry, mom" in his own forearm.

Chong said that despite repeatedly pounding on the cell door and calling for help, no DEA personnel came to his assistance. The DEA later admitted that its agents "accidentally" left Chong in the cell and publicly apologized for the oversight.

Neither DEA headquarters in suburban Washington nor the San Diego office has commented on the settlement. The incident was investigated by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, but the results of that investigation have not been released.

Criticisms have swirled around NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly''s record on the "stop and frisk" practice, particularly since Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested him for Homeland Security secretary last week and Pres. Obama spoke supportively. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic penned "Prominent Democrats Are Now Comfortable With Racial and Ethnic Profiling," asking "How else can one interpret President Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer saying that the NYPD's Ray Kelly would make a good secretary of Homeland Security?" In Reason's July issue (published before the president's comment), Jacob Sullum makes a case that the stop and frisk program constitutes harassment and is unconstitutional. An interview by Jennifer Gonnerman with the admittedly disgruntled ex-NYPD officer Pedro Serrano published last May in New York magazine paints a picture of New York stop and frisks as corrupt or even criminal.

Kelly for his part has doubled down, claiming in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the stop and frisk practice is part of good policing, a reason for New York City's dropping crime rate which has saved "7,383 lives," most of them young men of color. But Alex Pareene has provided a point-by-point rebuttal to the Kelly piece in Salon.com. And MSNBC "Morning Joe" co host Mika Brzezinski pushed back on the claim in an interview with Kelly yesterday, pointing out "... the numbers... show that the people who are stopped and frisked are primarily minorities and primarily end up to be found doing nothing wrong. So one of the arguments would be that going up to people who are doing nothing wrong is not stopping crime -- it's breeding resentment and playing a dangerous game of profiling that could explode at some point." (Quote via Mediaite and Mike Riggs.) A "room for debate" collection in The New York Times yesterday offers opinions on both sides of the Kelly question.

chart from the Zimring article

One question I've not seen asked directly is, what does academic research say about stop and frisk? A look online shows that the leading scholar researching New York City's crime drop is UC-Berkeley professor Frank Zimring. Zimring is the author of a 2001 book, "The City that Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control." In August of that year he published a Scientific American article highlighting his findings. (It's behind a paywall for subscribers, the note about becoming a Facebook fan of Sciam notwithstanding.) An earlier version of the article can be found on Scribd, and I believe that despite its academic nature is spectacular for what it implies about the current debate.

Briefly, Zimring is a big fan of the innovations that New York City police have made in recent decades, which he credits with gaining a drop in crime going significantly beyond that seen by other cities during the same time period. Zimring is careful, however, to note that just because the NYPD tried new tactics during the time that that happened, doesn't mean that every one of those tactics was necessarily successful. There are two programs he believes were clearly effective, according to a chart on page 29 -- the targeting of "hot spots" and the destruction of public drug markets. (Though Zimring notes that drug sales did not decrease as a result of shutting down the markets -- they just shifted into less visible forms that produce less crime.)

There are three tactics Zimring believes probably were effective, according to the chart -- increased manpower, COMPSTAT management and mapping, and gun programs.

And there is one tactic Zimring points out for which it is "not known" whether it was effective or not. Care to guess which one that was? You guessed right -- it's "aggressive arrests and stops" -- the very practice for which Kelly is now loudly proclaiming success, despite the heavy criticisms that have been heaped upon it.

Which means one of two things: Either Kelly knows that stop and frisk has not been proven to be successful, but is trying to put one over on the rest of us; or he believes it works, but without evidence, and has made key decisions about policing policy and civil liberties with insufficient basis.

Whatever one thinks about stop and frisk, and whatever further research ultimately may determine about it, there's another reason to object to Kelly's proposed DHS appointment. While conducting numerous stops and searches of New Yorkers, police have gone on to arrest many of them for minor offenses -- including marijuana possession, and at sky-high rates. This is actually a pattern common to cities large and small around the country -- police frequent certain neighborhoods, do lots of searches while they're there, and then arrest people for any small thing they find, not just for the serious crimes they' (sincerely or ostensibly) go to the neighborhoods to fight. The result is gaping-wide disparities in who gets arrested for crimes like possession -- people use drugs as much if not more in the nice parts of town, but police don't go there as much or stop many people who live there when they do. This combination of otherwise defensible targeting of high-crime neighborhoods for police presence, but combined with the strict arrest policies that have become common the last few decades, is one of the major driving forces of racial disparity in the criminal justice system, perhaps the leading one.

But the bigger problem here for Kelly is that in New York State it is illegal for police to make most of these marijuana arrests -- because marijuana is decriminalized in New York State unless the possessor has it in public view. What researchers like Harry Levine have documented is that police in New York City have a practice of ordering people to remove any marijuana from their pockets where it was hidden, and then arresting them for having it in public view -- even though it only came into public view because a police officer coerced the defendant into displaying it!

These are illegal arrests, and they happen tens of thousands of times every year in New York City. In September of 2011 Kelly acknowledged the problem by sending a memo to NYPD officers instructing them not to do that any more. Kelly was appointed commissioner in 2002, for the second time, nine years before sending the memo . He only took action to stop this widely-known, very widespread lawbreaking by his officers, that directly violates the rights of New Yorkers, after it was repeatedly publicized in the media and taken up by legislators. And since the memo went out, NYPD officers have continued to engage in the practice about 80% as often as they did before. It's better that Kelly sent the memo compared with if he never did anything about the issue. But "too little, too late" is an understatement, and now he's aggressively defending the root stop and frisk practice that sustains the illegal arrest campaign.

Kelly may be a skillful commissioner whose work has done good in some ways for the city; I'm willing to believe that. But his unconcern for rule of law and civil rights, his apparently complete insensitivity to issues of inappropriate profiling, and his willing to propagandize in the media, make him a poor choice for Homeland Security, an area of government in which all those concerns take on special weight due to its nature. I hope that Sen. Schumer and Pres. Obama will heed the warnings. It's good to talk about race and the justice system, but if you really care about it then your actions -- whom you appoint, and for what -- are what count.

The US states of Colorado and Washington voted last year to legalize marijuana and are moving forward toward implementing legalization. Activists in several states are lining up to try to do the same next year, and an even bigger push will happen in 2016. With public opinion polls now consistently showing support for pot legalization at or above 50%, it appears that nearly a century of marijuana prohibition in the US is coming to an end.

A coffee shop in Amsterdam, where clients can sit and smoke. Why no on-premises consumption here? (wikimedia.org)

Exactly how it comes to an end and what will replace it are increasingly important questions as we move from dreaming of legalization to actually making it happen. The Netherlands, which for decades now has allowed open marijuana consumption and sales at its famous coffee shops, provides some salutary lessons -- if reformers, state officials, and politicians are willing to heed them.

To be clear, the Dutch have not legalized marijuana. The marijuana laws remain on the books, but are essentially overridden by the Dutch policy of "pragmatic tolerance," at least as far as possession and regulated sales are concerned. Cultivation is a different matter, and that has proven the Achilles Heel of Dutch pot policy. Holland's failure to allow for a system of legal supply for the coffee shops leaves shop owners to deal with illegal marijuana suppliers -- the "backdoor problem" -- and leaves the system open to charges it is facilitating criminality by buying product from criminal syndicates.

Still, even though the Dutch system is not legalization de jure and does not create a complete legal system of marijuana commerce, reformers and policymakers here can build on the lessons of the Dutch experience as we move toward making legal marijuana work in the US.

"Governments are looking to reform their drug policies in order to maximize resources, promote health and security while protecting people from damaging and unwarranted arrests," said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program. "The Netherlands has been a leader in this respect. As other countries and local jurisdictions consider reforming their laws, it's possible that the Netherlands' past offers a guide for the future."

This includes the separation of the more prevalent marijuana market from hard drug dealers. In the Netherlands, only 14% of cannabis users say they can get other drugs from their sources for cannabis. By contrast in Sweden, for example, 52% of cannabis users report that other drugs are available from cannabis dealers. That separation of hard and soft drug markets has limited Dutch exposure to drugs like heroin and crack cocaine and led to Holland having the lowest number of problem drug users in the European Union, the report found.

Pragmatic Dutch drug policies have not been limited to marijuana. The Netherlands has been a pioneer in harm reduction measures, such as needle exchanges and safe consumption sites, has made drug treatment easy to access, and has decriminalized the possession of small quantities of all drugs. As a result, in addition to having the lowest number of problem drug users, Holland has virtually wiped out new HIV infections among injection drug users. And, because of decriminalization, Dutch citizens have been spared the burden of criminal records for low-level, nonviolent offenses.

The Dutch have, for example, virtually eliminated marijuana possession arrests. According to figures cited in the report, in a typical recent year, Dutch police arrested people for pot at a rate of 19 per 100,0000, while rates in the US and other European countries were 10 times that or more.

For veteran drug reform activist Joep Oomen of the European NGO Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD), the report is welcome but not exactly "stop the presses" news.

"The conclusions of this report have been known for a long time," he told the Chronicle. "Already by the end of the 1990s, when European governments had to acknowledge that Dutch drug policies had proven more effective in reducing risks and harms than many other countries, the criticism that had been expressed earlier by mainly German and French heads of state was silenced. For instance, in the Netherlands the age of first heroin use is the highest of Europe, which is explained by the relative tolerance concerning cannabis use." [Ed: A high age of first use is considered good, because it means that fewer people are experimenting with a drug when they are young -- which in turn means fewer people ever trying it, and those who do being more likely to be capable of avoiding problematic use.]

While the Dutch can point to solid indications of success with their pragmatic drug policies, it is not all rosy skies. The "back door problem" alluded to above continues unresolved, and the relative laxness of Dutch marijuana policy has led to an influx of "drug tourists," especially from neighboring countries, such as France and Germany. Both of those irritants have provided fodder for conservative parties and administrations that have sought to roll back the reforms.

"There seems to be more admiration for Dutch drug policy outside the Netherlands than inside," Oomen observed. "Right-wing governments that have dominated the Dutch political climate since 2002 have slowly dismantled acceptance-oriented drug policy. Lately the establishment of the Weedpass in the southern part of the country [which excludes non-Dutch from access to the coffee shops] and new measures against grow shops and coffee shops are definitely threatening to undermine the coffee shop model," he said.

"Instead of completing the regulation of this model by solving the coffee shops' back door problem, the government seems to apply a policy of slow elimination by making the conditions worse in which the shops have to operate," Oomen continued. "And the Dutch press follows blindly, often referring to coffee shops as a link in a criminal chain, which is unavoidable since the ban on cultivation forces shop owners to deal with criminals, but without questioning the measures that reinforce the criminal aspect."

While the national government may now be hostile to pragmatic marijuana policies, it is facing considerable resistance from elected officials. The Weedpass program now appears to be largely a dead letter, thanks to opposition from the likes of Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan, and other local elected officials are moving to address the back door problem.

"Several Dutch mayors have plans for municipal cannabis farms to supply the coffee shops and take crime out of the industry," said Grund, research director at the Addiction Research Center. "But if Dutch drug policy offers one lesson to foreign policymakers, it is that change should be comprehensive, regulating sale to consumers, wholesale supply and cultivation."

Grund is watching the American experience with legalization in Colorado and Washington and had some observations he shared with the Chronicle.

"As far as I can judge," he said, "these are both pretty solid proposals, although quite different in detail and approach -- e.g., a vertically integrated chain of supply in Colorado and separate licensing for producers, processors, and retailer in Washington. Clearly in both states legislators have done their best. Interesting then, that they end up with rather different plans, which is actually fine, as it provides us with the opportunity to evaluate different models. For more than 25 years, there was just about only the Dutch experience with cannabis decriminalization and coffee shops; now we see different models of cannabis reform and distribution being implemented across continents. Comparing these experiences as they evolve should allow us to develop more effective drug policies."

Policymakers and regulators should try to avoid rigidity and be ready to deal with unintended responses and consequences, the Dutch social scientist said.

"The point is to approach these flexibly and pragmatically; adjust when necessary, while keeping your eyes on the ball: cutting the link between cannabis on the one hand, and criminal records, mafia and more, on the other," Grund advised, noting that the 1976 Dutch law separating hard and soft drugs did not anticipate the arrival of the coffee shop phenomenon. "As Dr. Eddy Engelsman, former chief drug policy maker at the ministry of health -- and known as the architect of Dutch drug policy -- said when we interviewed him, 'coffee shops just emerged.' The policymakers deemed that these fit their overall policy objectives and allowed for them to ply their trade openly," he recalled.

Grund also weighed in on personal cultivation -- Colorado allows it; Washington does not -- and public use, which it appears will remain forbidden in both states.

"I think Washington presents more of a business and revenue raising strategy, while Colorado feels more like grassroots meets civil libertarian meets amenable regulator," he opined. "The more social, homegrown orientation of the Colorado proposal – allowing for home growing, bartering between friends -- could perhaps engender a less market driven distribution structure, where friends compete in growing the most pleasant marijuana, not the most profitable. Something like the Spanish cannabis clubs," he suggested.

Public, convivial pot smoking in designated areas should be allowed, Grund said, because it has benefits.

"Dedicated places of consumption -- such as the coffee shops in the Netherlands or shisha parlors -- offer an opportunity to promote responsible behavior around cannabis consumption," he argued. "Smoking cannabis in a safe, hospitable and stress free environment engenders different use patterns from quickly getting high in a service ally behind a bar or in a car parked in a quiet place. Coffee shops offer a moderating environment where self regulation is supported by social learning and control."

While Grund was looking forward to the future in the US, Oomen was thinking of the unfinished business in the Netherlands, but his musing also provide food for thought for American reformers, especially those contemplating decriminalization measures.

"The lesson here is that decriminalization or depenalization are useful concepts for a transition period, but real progress can only be obtained and assured with legal regulation of the entire chain from producer to consumer," the ENCOD leader noted. "The Dutch case shows that politicians will always use the smallest margin they have to maintain to a repressive model, provoking criminal activities which they can use to justify their policies publically. This is the drug policy perpetual motion machine."

Colorado and Washington are already well down their particular paths to marijuana legalization. But there is still time for the next wave of legalization states to learn and apply those lessons, not just from Denver and Olympia, but from the Dutch pioneers as well.

Part five of an ongoing investigative series, "Prosecutorial Misconduct and Police Corruption in Drug Cases Across America."

With a plot out of a Hollywood movie or a gripping Lifetime TV show, a mesmerizing drama of sex, power, frame-ups, planted drugs, and lies unfolded in real life in Georgia when two Murray County sheriff's deputies recently pleaded guilty in federal court for their part in a scheme to send an innocent woman to prison. Now both deputies await sentencing on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury stemming from an FBI civil rights investigation into the odd goings-on Down South.

Angela Garmley (courtesy attorney McCracken Poston)

The woman in question, Angela Garmley, had filed a complaint with the Georgia Judicial Qualification Committee alleging that Chief Magistrate Judge Bryant Cochran solicited sex from her in return for legal favors in a pending assault case in which she was the victim. Shortly after Garmley filed her complaint, she was arrested on August 14, 2012 in sleepy Chatsworth, Georgia, and charged with possession of methamphetamines.

"My client was set up and framed with methamphetamine drugs by Judge Bryant Cochran, whom she had accused of soliciting her for sex in exchange for legal favors in a case she had in Cochran's court," attorney McCracken Poston told the Chronicle.

Poston, a former Georgia state representative from nearby Ringgold with a reputation as a crack attorney, is representing Garmley in a civil lawsuit against Murray County. And Garmley isn't alone. Since this scandal broke, three women who worked in Cochran's court have filed a separate lawsuit against the judge and the county claiming Cochran sexually harassed them while county officials negligently failed to protect their rights.

"The judge, two deputies, and a handyman named C.J. who is employed at Judge Cochran's property conspired to plant the drugs on my client. And if the frame-up hadn't been discovered my client would've been facing 25 to 30 years in prison," Poston said, echoing the allegations made it the lawsuit.

Although Garmley's drug charge was dismissed a week later at the request of investigators when the frame-up was exposed, she is still suffering the consequences of her false arrest. Under Georgia law, it takes one year for the charge to be removed from Garmley's record, and the arrest has already cost her.

"My client was denied a much higher paid job due to the felony drug charge on her record and what the judge and cops did to her. Nobody should have to suffer like that," Poston said.

Lust and Privilege at the County Courthouse

According to Garmley's lawsuit -- and largely supported by the record in judicial proceedings so far -- she went to the courthouse on April 9, 2012 in regard to an assault on her by three persons the previous day. When Garmley arrived at Cochran's office, he requested that she meet with him alone, preventing her sister, who had been an eyewitness to the assault, from attending or providing a corroborating statement.

"While privately sitting in chambers with Cochran, I related details about the assault," Garmley said in the lawsuit.

But Cochran was more interested in the state of her marriage, the suit alleges, whether or not she had cheated on her estranged husband, and whether the persons who assaulted her "have anything on her to hurt her divorce from Joe Garmley." While shying away from particulars of the assault, Cochran made repeated comments about "how pretty" Garmley was and then veered into even more uncomfortable territory.

"My wife doesn't take care of my sexual needs and I need a mistress to have sex with I can trust," Garmley said Cochran told her. He had "a real boner" for her and wanted her to return to his office the following week, he added flirtatiously, the lawsuit alleges.

Garmley played along as if interested in his offer, the suit alleges, and then Cochran upped the ante by asking Garmley to send him a photo of herself in a seductive way to let him take a "sneak peek" at what he was going to get. After giving Garmley his private cell number, Cochran, with a fixed stare at Garmley, gave her a direct order: "Come back on Wednesday with a dress and no panties so we can have sex."

Garmley told investigators and her attorney that she complied with Cochran's request for a revealing photo, sending him pictures of herself in her underwear.

"I sent the pictures hoping Judge Cochran would permit my assault case to move forward to get justice," Garmley stated in her suit. "But I had no intention of meeting behind closed doors without panties to have sex with the judge."

Instead, Garmley filed a complaint against Cochran with judicial authorities, and that's when her experience with Murray County justice shifted from bad dream to nightmare.

Deputy Josh Greeson (courtesy attorney McCracken Poston)

The Drug Bust That Wasn't

Within days of filing her complaint against Cochran, Garmley suddenly found herself on the wrong side of the law, charged with possession of methamphetamine after a roadside traffic stop by Murray County Sheriff's Deputy Josh Greeson. Greeson's arrest report -- now in the hands of the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the US Attorneys Office, and Garmley's attorneys -- provided the official version of events.

"On 8-14-2012, while patrolling Eastbound on the Brown Bridge Road I noticed a vehicle heading Westbound with its bright lights on. As the vehicle passed me I turned around to make a traffic stop for failure to dim its bright lights," Greeson wrote. "Failure to dim headlights is an indicator someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol."

Garmley was a passenger in the vehicle, being given a ride by a male friend, Jason Southern, who was also charged with meth possession, as well as driving with a suspended license, and who is also a plaintiff in Garmley's lawsuit. Southern was giving Garmley a ride to the property she shared with her estranged husband, who lived in a separate residence on the property.

"When the vehicle pulled into the trailer park at 4177 Brown Bridge, I turned my blue lights on for the vehicle to stop," Greeson wrote in his report. "When I got out I approached the passenger side and requested to see both the driver and the passenger driver's license. Mr. Southern stated his license was suspended."

Then Joe Garmley showed up and began angrily arguing with his wife and Southern. Joe Garmley repeatedly ignored Deputy Greeson's orders to step away from the vehicle and continued to argue with his wife. Greeson then arrested him for obstruction of justice. Joe Garmley is also a plaintiff in Garmley's lawsuit.

"When Mr. Garmley was arrested," Poston explained, "his offense was a simple misdemeanor that he could have bonded out on that same night, but guess what? Mr. Garmley was held overnight without bond."

Returning to the business at hand, Deputy Greeson continued to investigate.

"When Mrs. Garmley stepped out of the vehicle she stumbled and had slurred speech, which led me to believe that she was on some sort of illegal drug," he reported. "I asked Ms. Garmley if she had used any illegal drugs or if there was any illegal drugs inside the vehicle and she said no. I asked Ms. Garmley if I could run my dog around her vehicle to assure me that there wasn't anything illegal in the vehicle and she stated it was fine to search her vehicle if I wanted. I got my K-9 Ruhl out of my patrol car and started my search at the back driver's side tail light."

Greeson also noted in his report that during the first search of the vehicle with the K-9 dog that the animal sniffing enhanced at the driver's side front tire and front lower part of the door. "On my second pass by the driver's side, the sniffing of the K-9 enhanced again."

"Due to my training with Ruhl at the South Georgia K-9 school, I was certain that his alert was true," Greeson wrote. "And based on my police training about different techniques that are used to hide narcotics, I looked up under the vehicle and located a small metal can stuck to the front of the vehicle right under the driver's door. When I opened the can there were bags of a crystal substance believed to be methamphetamine."

Garmley denied that the drugs were hers. "Then Mrs. Garmley said this was a set up," Greeson wrote in the report.

At this point, Murray County Sheriff's Captain Michael Henderson, a first cousin to Judge Cochran, appeared on the scene. "You happen to be in the wrong place," he told Southern, according to the lawsuit.

Both Ms. Garmley and the driver, Jason Southern, were charged with possession of meth and hauled off to jail while her husband Joe was transported to jail in a separate vehicle. Garmley posted a $2,500 bond and was released from jail. Her husband Joe also posted bail, but Southern remained in jail.

"Once Angela told me what happened, I knew the whole case stunk to high heaven," attorney Poston said. "My client and I had been on TV about the sexual allegations that Ms. Garmley had filed against Judge Cochran with the State Judicial Qualification Board and all of a sudden, my client gets pulled over and drugs were found in her car. I told the judge in open court that my client had been set up and that I would have the case investigated," Poston added.

Poston complained to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), and GBI investigator James Harris launched an immediate investigation, questioning Deputy Greeson, Captain Henderson, and others involved. That's when the official story began to fall apart.

The day after the arrest, Deputy Greeson testified that he had not received prior information about Garmley's white Dodge vehicle prior to pulling it over. During GBI agents' interviews with Greeson a week later, he insisted again that he had not been instructed to pull Garmley over. But by then, Poston and Garmley had reported to investigators that a man known as "C.J.," who worked as a handyman for Judge Cochran, had confessed to planting the drugs on Garmley's car.

"This C.J. guy confessed to me and Garmley that Judge Cochran paid him money to plant the drugs on Garmley's vehicle," Poston told the Chronicle. "She told both me and GBI investigators that on the night prior to her arrest, C.J. came by her house around 1:30am acting strange, asking Garmley if her father, who no longer lived with her, wanted to trade off his guitar. Mrs. Garmley said as C.J. talked, she noticed him watching her cell phone, but she moved it. C.J. said the judge told him that if he got ahold of Garmley's phone that he would get paid more, particularly because Garmley had the judge's phone number and text messages."

Realizing that his cell phone log could be subpoenaed regardless of whether his messages were deleted, Greeson finally cracked, telling investigators that Henderson had asked him to pull the drug-planted car over and to keep quiet about it.

"Henderson asked Greeson not to tell investigators about his order to pull Garmley's car over, which put Greeson in a position to lie about it, and that's a conspiracy," said Poston. "Captain Henderson then changed course and confessed his role in the scheme to have Garmley's car stopped so Greeson could find the planted drugs."

Surrounded by reporters, Greeson sobbed as he recalled having feared to refuse Captain Henderson's order to deny knowing ahead of time about Garmley's car having drugs. Greeson also said Henderson visited his home before he spoke with GBI about Garmley's arrest.

"I can't remember exactly how Henderson put it, but he said for me not to mention about the lookout on the vehicle and that I was the only one who knew about the lookout. And if I didn't say nothing about it, nobody would know," he said. "I was always told to stay on Henderson's good side."

Both Henderson and Greeson were fired from the sheriff department and Cochran,who had just been reelected for a third term, abruptly resigned his judgeship a day after the arrests of Garmley, her husband Joe, and Jason Southern.

Henderson later told investigators he arrived at the arrest scene to assist Greeson with Garmley's husband Joe after he appeared on the scene and disrupted the investigation. Judge Cochran denied Garmley's allegations and further denied that he resigned because of them, instead offering up that he had resigned over warrants he had pre-signed for officers when he wasn't available during normal hours. Pre-signing warrants is a breach of judicial ethics; it would allow any officer to pick up a blank warrant with Cochran's signature and fill in the blanks to effect the arrest of search of a citizen without the judge's knowledge or any judicial oversight.

Michael Henderson, 41, a former captain with Murray County Sheriff Department pleaded guilty on March 27 to obstructing a civil rights investigation into allegations surrounding the "throw down" dope found under Mrs. Garmley's vehicle as well pleading guilty to a charge of tampering with a witness pending a civil rights investigation. He faces up to 20 years in prison with a fine up to $250,000.

Josh Greeson, 26, pleaded guilty on April 12 to similar charges after previously denying he had not been instructed by then-Captain Henderson to pull over Garmley's drug-laden car as she headed home. Greeson admitted to obstructing a pending public corruption and civil rights violations by tampering with a government witness -- Angela Garmley. Greeson also admitted to deleting text messages and call logs that he received on his phone from Henderson and Cochran on the night he stopped Garmley with the planted drugs.

As part of their plea deals, both Greeson and Henderson agreed to tell everything they knew about the set-up, as well as what Judge Cochran knew. The investigation continues. Judge Cochran has yet to be indicted on any criminal charges, and the same goes for the man known as C.J., who admitted to planting the drugs. But both are named in Garmley's civil suit.

The case has drawn howls of outrage from prosecutors, law enforcement, and defense attorneys alike.

"The criminal justice system is based on the premise that police officers must be honest and truthful above all," said Northern District of Georgia US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. "Mr. Henderson and Mr. Greeson weren't, and such conduct cannot stand."

"We as taxpayers should all be horrified," said prominent Houston criminal defense lawyer Vivian King. King is host of a weekly court justice program called Truth & Justice. "We as taxpayers should hold our judges and law enforcement officers to a higher standard and if found guilty they should be punished. And the judge in this case should be disbarred."

"I never had fellow narcotics officers plant drugs, but usually when something like this happens, there is usually a woman somewhere in the mix," said retired Houston police narcotics officer Billy Williams, and the case of Judge Cochran was no exception. "So he abused his power for sex and a woman brought him down."

Henderson and Greer await sentencing, and Poston is urging them to sing like canaries.

"Under federal sentencing guidelines the only thing the deputies can do to help themselves is to tell everything they know about my client being framed with the drugs and that includes everything they know about the judge's involvement," he said. "I suspect there are more people involved or knew the dope was planted because Judge Cochran made several calls to the sheriff department about my client's vehicle having drugs inside."

In this case of lust, power, and justice perverted, the fat lady is yet to sing.

Blacks are 3.7 times more likely to get busted for marijuana possession than whites. (aclu.org/marijuana)

The disparity in arrest rates is startlingly consistent, the report found. In more than 96% of the counties covered in the report, blacks were arrested at higher rates than whites. Racial disparities in pot busts came in large counties and small, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, with large black populations and with small ones.

In some counties, the disparity rose to 15 times more likely, and in the Upper Midwest states of Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, blacks were eight times more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites. Nationwide, blacks were 3.73 times more likely to get arrested for marijuana than whites.

And it's getting worse, not better. The report found that even though the racial disparities in marijuana arrests existed 10 years ago, they have increased in 38 states and the District of Columbia.

"The war on marijuana has disproportionately been a war on people of color," said Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project and one of the primary authors of the report. "State and local governments have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against black people and communities, needlessly ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system at tremendous human and financial cost."

In budgetary terms, that cost to the states was $3.61 billion in 2010 alone, the report found. During the decade the report studied, despite aggressive enforcement and rising marijuana arrest rates, all those arrests failed to stop or even diminish the use of marijuana, and support for its legalization only increased.

"The aggressive policing of marijuana is time-consuming, costly, racially biased, and doesn't work," said Edwards. "These arrests have a significant detrimental impact on people's lives, as well as on the communities in which they live. When people are arrested for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana, they can be disqualified from public housing or student financial aid, lose or find it more difficult to obtain employment, lose custody of their child, or be deported."

The report recommends legalizing, taxing, and regulating marijuana, which it said would eliminate racially-targeted selective enforcement of marijuana laws, save the billions of dollars spent on enforcing pot prohibition, and raise badly needed revenues by taxation. If legalization is not doable, then decriminalization, and if not decriminalization, then lowest prioritization.

The ACLU also calls in the report for reforms in policing practices, including not only ending racial profiling, but also constitutionally-suspect stop-and-frisk searches, such as those embraced with such gusto by the NYPD in New York City. It also crucially recommends reforming federal law enforcement funding streams, such as the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, that encourage police to make low-level drug busts by using performance measures that reward such arrests at the expense of other measures.

Thanks to aggressive policing strategies, New York City has for more than a decade been the world's leader in marijuana possession arrests, but now those numbers are starting to go down.

According to the State Division of Criminal Justice Services, some 10,078 people had been arrested on pot possession charges through April 23, about a 20% decrease over the same period last year. And last year saw a 22% overall decline in possession arrests over 2011.

That means that if the current trend continues, New York City will still see more than 30,000 small-time marijuana busts this year. But that's better than the 50,000 of a couple of years ago or the 40,000 last year.

This is in a state that decriminalized marijuana possession in 1977. The arrests occur because possession in public view is not decriminalized, and for years, the NYPD followed a practice of police directing people to produce what they were carrying, then charging them with misdemeanor possession instead of citing them for the civil offense of possession.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly issued a memo in fall 2011 directing the force to stop arresting people for that, which undoubtedly accounts for some of the decline. Increased public scrutiny of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy, which saw some 600,000 people a year searched -- the vast majority of them young people of color -- has probably also played a role in forcing the numbers down.

Earlier this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that people arrested for small-time possession would no longer be sent to Central Booking, where they typically spend 24 hours before being released, but would instead be given a desk appearance ticket. That move reduced the pain somewhat, but not the arrest numbers.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has proposed decriminalizing possession in public view. If that law had been in effect last year, 39,257 of the 40,661 pot possession arrests in 2012 would have gone up in smoke.

People -- almost all of them young people of color -- are being arrested at the rate of a thousand a week in New York City for marijuana possession "in public view," but although a legislative fix was in sight this week, the state's political establishment couldn't come to an agreement on it. Instead, the legislature is going on vacation.

The New York City "in public view" arrests violate the spirit of the Empire State's 1977 marijuana decriminalization law, which made possession of small amounts of marijuana a civil offense, not a criminal one. They typically occur when the NYPD stops and frisks someone, then either reaches into his pockets or belongings or intimidates the detainee into pulling out his biggie himself and then charges him with the criminal misdemeanor of possession "in public view."

Through-out the legislative session, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Senate and Assembly leaders talked about fixing the situation as part of the budget process. During his State of the State address, Cuomo had called for decriminalizing the possession of up to 15 grams "in public view," but with smoking in public remaining a misdemeanor. But on Thursday, Cuomo and the legislative leadership announced they had reached a final deal on the budget, one that didn't include marijuana law reform.

That doesn't mean decriminalization reform is dead this year -- the session will resume after a three-week hiatus -- but it is certainly delayed and possibly derailed without having the impetus of the budget agreement behind it. In either case, legislators and community activists blasted the leadership for punting on the issue while the arrests (and the costs) mount by the day.

"I am gravely disappointed that this budget failed to enact justice for the more than 44,000 individuals arrested last year based on a flawed law. Not only does allowing these arrests directly impact the lives of individuals and their communities, they are a gross misappropriation of city and state resources, and a waste of officer manpower that can be spent on more pressing law enforcement matters," said Assemblyman Karim Camara, Chair of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. "Changing this flawed law has the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC Police Commissioner Kelly, the District Attorneys of the five boroughs, and Buffalo and Nassau and Albany counties, the Police Benevolent Association and major law enforcement agencies throughout the state. Yet politics trumped the policy that would be best for New York City and our state."

"This is an issue that cannot wait. Our tens of thousands of youth arrested annually under unfair practices shouldn't have to wait," said Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez. "They deserve better -- they deserve justice and equality. And they deserve it now. We need to end this policy that has plagued our communities for too long and make public view possession a violation."

"Why is it acceptable to kick the can down the road when it comes to protecting the constitutional rights of young Black and Latino New Yorkers?" asked Alfredo Carrasquillo, civil rights community organizer for VOCAL-NY. "Getting this done is a test for the political leadership in Albany that right now they are failing. It's time to stop delaying justice when it comes to ending racially biased and costly marijuana arrests."

Since 2002, nearly 500,000 thousand people have been arrested in New York for marijuana possession -- the vast majority of those arrests, 440,000, took place in New York City. Last year alone in the city, there were nearly 40,000 such arrests, far exceeding the total marijuana arrests in the city between 1981 and 1995. The cost to taxpayers is $75 million a year, and over $600 million in the last decade. A report released earlier this week found that the NYPD had spent one million hours making these arrests over the past decade.

"Behind the one million police hours spent arresting young Black and Latino men is the shameful truth of 21st Century racism. These are unlawful, racially biased arrests, plain and simple. We need our elected officials to stand up for civil rights for all people" said Chino Hardin, Field Coordinator and Trainer with the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions.